East of the Sun and West of the Moon
A poor farmer gives his youngest daughter to a white bear who comes knocking one Thursday evening, and in the bear's mountain castle she is joined every night in the dark by someone she has been forbidden to look at. Her mother presses a candle stub on her during a visit home; three drops of hot tallow fall where they should not, and the girl is left to find a place that lies east of the sun and west of the moon, with three old women and the four winds to ask along the way. The Norwegian form of the Cupid and Psyche type, and the tale through which Nordic material entered English children's literature.
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Lineage
- recorded in ↑ Norwegian Folktales
- shares sources with ↑ Cupid and Psyche
Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 53% · 11 shared
- 51% · 11 shared
- 51% · 10 shared
- 48% · 11 shared
- 48% · 9 shared
- 47% · 12 shared